Improvement in processes for smelting iron



, UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICEO IMPROVEMENT IN PROCESSES FOR SMELTING IRON.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 3,316, dated July 24, 1855.

To all whom it may concern.-

Be it known that I, SAMUEL MAOFERRAN,

4 of Philadelphia, in the county of Philadelphia and State of Pennsylvania, have invented an Improvement in Melting Iron; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full, clear, and exact description of the principle or character which distinguishes it from all other things before known, and of the usual manner of making, modifying, and using the same.

My invention consists in the employment of gas-carbon in the process of smelting iron as a substitute for and improvement upon other bustibility; but I have discovered that it may be used together with the iron in the cupola without coal or any other fuel, and that it melts the iron in much less time than coal, and furnishes a very pure and hard iron. In order to use it, I start the fire and make the bed with coal, as usual, and I then charge with the iron and crystallized carbon, using no coal, but substituting the crystallized carbon in the place of the coal. The heat soon becomes very intense, and the charge may be drawn ininuch less time than when coal is used.

Coal may be mixed with the carbon, but to no advantage, as the carbon seems to do better without it, and is far cheaper in localities where it can be had conveniently.

I do not profess to have discovered the combustibility of this form of carbon; but I claim to have been the first to have employed it with the charge in iron-furnaces I claim The use of gas-carbon as a fuel in the process of smelting iron, as set forth.

SAMUEL MAGFERRAN.

Witnesses:

F. L. PLEIS, JAS. MACFER-RAN. 

